"Major Hugo will at once put himself under the command of General Belliard."
On the following day, General Hugo presented himself at the house of General Belliard in the uniform of an ordinary grenadier with woollen epaulettes. Belliard did not recognise him. General Hugo gave his name.
"What does this private soldier's uniform mean?" Belliard inquired.
"Grenadier or general," was Hugo's response.
And Belliard flung his arms round him. That very day he sent back the order to the emperor. It was returned with this correction in the margin in Napoleon's handwriting:—
"General Hugo will immediately take up the command at Thionville."
History has related the details of that siege in which General Hugo defended the citadel and governed the town. The citadel of Thionville was one of the latest to float the tricoloured flag. But it had to yield, though to the Bourbons, not to the enemy. General Hugo could not stop in Paris: there were too many heart-breaking scenes for the old soldier in the capital, where women strewed flowers in front of the Cossacks, where the people shouted "Vivent les allies!" and where the statue of the emperor was dragged through the gutters.
He bought the château of Saint-Lazare at Blois and retired there. Means did not allow of the beautiful convent of the Feuillantines being kept any longer. Madame Hugo remained at Paris in modest apartments, to look after her children, Eugène and Victor being placed in the abbé Cordier's boarding school, rue Sainte-Marguerite No. 41. Abel, an officer exempt from these things, was left free. Eugène and Victor were destined for the École polytechnique.
We have already pointed out that the convent of the Feuillantines had kept its word and turned Victor into a poet. Now let us hear about the boy's first attempts.
How grateful would I have been to-day to any contemporary of Dante, Shakespeare or Corneille who would give me similar details of their lives, that twenty years of friendship with Victor Hugo enables me to give here!